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From: edmoy@violet.berkeley.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: MacExpo: Bursting at the seams
Message-ID: <6607@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 19 Jan 88 19:20:39 GMT
References: <39117@sun.uucp>
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In article <39117@sun.uucp> chuq@plaid.Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>This was the year the Mac went Hyper. If I never see the word Hyper again,
>I'll be happy. A few months ago, in Boston, Apple announced Hypercard. This
>month, in San Francisco, the Mac Vendors went Hyper.

Other than "hyper", the word that impressed me was "color".  Lots of it.  Lots
of color monitors and video cards to choose from, such as SuperMac, PCPC,
Jasmine, E-machines, etc.  Most were 8-bit color, but there were at least
five 24-bit color systems (RasterOp, Jasmine, SuperMac, TrueVision and
Mass-Micro Systems).  The last two are designed to capture video signal
(from a camera or VCR) in 24-bit color at 30 frames per second.

And there was three color printers that I saw (QMS, CalComp, Versatec).
These were all based on the multi-pass wax toner process and were either
200 or 300 dpi.  They only cost 14 arms and 32 legs :-)

On a related topic, there were ump-teen video digiters and scanners at the
show.  Of mention is ProViz, which uses a video camera mounted in a copy
stand.  It has color filters that go in front of the lens to take separate
images in red, green and blue (a poor-man's way of color digitizing, but ProViz
still isn't what I would call cheap).

>Speaking of hyperventilating, trying to breathe was an interesting exercise
>at this years MacExpo. It's interesting to put things in perspective. Two
>years ago, MacExpo was at Brooks Hall, sharing it with the Apple II. Last
>year, it moved to Moscone Center, sharing it with a boat show. This year,
>the boat show is gone, more than doubling the size of the exhibits over last
>year. Friday, normally the slow day, was walking gridlock. Getting from one
>side of the hall to the other was a non-trivial problem, due to the size of
>the crowd. I'm frankly surprised the fire marshall didn't move in. It was,
>in no uncertain terms, a zoo. If you occasionally see something where I say
>"look interesting, I'm going to get more info" it's because I saw something
>I was interested in but could never get close enough to the booth to grab
>marketing material, much less talk to someone.

I heard that a total of 30,000 people attended last year's MacExpo.  This year,
20,000 attended just on Friday!  I don't know what the final figures are.

Thursday the 14 was "VIP day" by invitation only.  It was alot nicer, being
many fewer people than Friday or Saturday.  At the opening talk, they showed
some of the old videos (like the scene of "1984" with a women throwing a
hammer and smashing the giant video monitor).  They had a new video of what
1997 (ten years hence) would be like.  Besides implying that Macs would take
over the computer world, the scene I liked the most was one showing a new Mac,
shaped like sunglasses with floppy disks the size of postage stamps!

Edward Moy
Workstation Software Support Group
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720

edmoy@violet.Berkeley.EDU
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